Publishing Industry Functions Successfully Despite Brooklyn Digs

Can the publishing industry, forever a particularly Manhattan-based phenomenon, survive in that far-off borough on the other side of the East River? The New York Times investigates!

David Black, who represents writers such as Mitch Albom and Jimmy Breslin, made the move to Borough Hall over the summer. It wasn’t an easy decision.

“Would that be a problem?” Mr. Black said, pointing to the river from his 27th-floor office window, which boasts sweeping views of the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan skyline. “Is water a barrier to clients? Is it a barrier to the business? That was really the question.”

It didn’t used to be this way, another bullet-biting Brooklyn-based lit agent said. “When I first started out in this business, you had to be a Manhattan agent,” Howard Morhaim told The Times. He now keeps an office in Brooklyn Heights.

Then again, The Times concedes, perhaps this uproar is a bit overcooked: some of the writers these agents represent — many, actually — live outside of New York entirely. It is easy to forget that people do that.